Executive Summary of the BSI FY25 Annual Report

An overview of the activities of the Bureau of Special Investigations in Fiscal Year 2025.

Public assistance programs administered by DTA, MassHealth, and EEC provide vital social services for the Commonwealth’s most vulnerable residents — children, people with disabilities, individuals and families with low incomes, and people over 65.  During FY 2025 (FY25), BSI staff members benefited from the Office of the State Auditor’s expansion to an office located in Lawrence. BSI relies on a variety of technology solutions to bridge the distance between offices, increase accessibility, and effectively complete public benefit fraud investigations. Although BSI can conduct all investigatory tasks in person, most subjects of BSI investigations chose to participate in interviews via videoconference. This annual report summarizes BSI’s work and initiatives to execute its mission under its statutory charge: to help make government work better by investigating fraud, abuse, and illegal acts involving public assistance benefits throughout the Commonwealth. During FY25, BSI continued to investigate and identify fraud to maintain program integrity and uphold Commonwealth residents’ faith in public assistance programs. BSI’s efforts ensure that public assistance programs operate with transparency, accountability, and equity.

At the start of FY25, BSI updated its quarterly reporting to capture all completed cases that had calculation(s) returned within the quarter. This included cases with pending calculations from previous FYs. While reporting on completed overpayment calculations relies on the assistance of the related benefit programs to process them timely, this updated reporting process provides a more accurate measure of BSI’s quarterly case metrics. This is due to the fact that there are occasions when overpayments are recalculated due to new evidence; the recalculation may occur within a new quarter or FY. BSI quarterly reports continue to include initial overpayment calculations, while BSI annual reports include any recalculated overpayment amounts.²

$11,952,288  The amount of fraud identified by BSI in FY25

In FY25, BSI opened 4,513 new investigations and completed 4,179 investigations.³ This report includes a comprehensive breakdown of the fraud identified within each program that BSI investigated.⁴ It is notable that 535 cases⁵ (or 12% of all completed cases) were completed with identified fraud and 2,102 cases (or 50% of all completed cases) were completed with no identified fraud. Also notable is that BSI received 638 overpayment calculations⁶ during FY25—an increase of 103 from FY24. 

2. When a completed case has an initial overpayment calculation and subsequent recalculation, the overpayment amount is adjusted in BSI’s case management system (CMS) to reflect only the recalculated amount.
3. This number for completed investigations includes investigations opened during both this report’s FY and previous FYs.
4. All reported identified fraud dollar amounts have the cents removed and are rounded down to the nearest dollar.
5. This number of completed cases with identified fraud reflects all the completed cases with a calculated overpayment of a specific public benefit. These cases may or may not have a disposition as investigations are completed. This means that these cases may not be closed as of this report’s drafting. Note that BSI uses different disposition codes to categorize closed investigations with identified fraud.
6. This number of overpayment calculations received during this annual report’s FY reflects (1) all the cases with overpayment calculations received within the FY and (2) cases that may have been completed during a previous FY but were still pending overpayment calculations during the current FY.

Date published:	January 30, 2026